They will get it now or later.
Klaymen should simply invest it for them. Set up accounts in their name.
Even easier: invest his own “extra” (won’t ever need for the rest of his life) money however he thinks. And the kids will get it eventually.
No need to burden kids with all this.
Or, tell the kids you’re leaving all your assets to a charity. Maybe that will stir them into thinking about their own retirement.
Set up accounts in their name? I didn’t think I can set up a Roth IRA for my son…
Don’t think you can, for a non-minor. Your trust situation is probably the best if they’re likely to be irresponsible and you want to drip-feed them money rather than let them figure it out.
Can you set up two Roth IRAs in YOUR name? Then bequeath one to each of your kids.
Done.
Or, they can set up Roth IRAs and you put your money (eventually their money) into them annually.
Disclaimer: no idea how these things work.
There is a limit what I can contribute to a Roth, hence the idea was to put $7K in the kids’ Roths assuming they were willing to open them, and one of the two kids was.
You can ask how much they spend per year.
Ask them if that spending amount will continue when they retire.
Ask them how long they think they’ll live during retirement.
Do some math using an expected inflation for consumables.
Probably just need to open their eyes with hard facts and math.
Oh, and tell them your assets will go to a charity instead of them.
If they (well, one) still won’t listen, hey, you did your best.
I don’t think I would lightly say that my money is going to charity instead of my kids (even if I didn’t mean it), except in really extreme scenarios, of which it doesn’t sound like this is one.
I’m voting for a trust with scheduled disbursements over a longer period of time, if there’s a lot of money in question
And maybe exceptions for buying a house, money for health reasons, or education with the trustee’s approval (eg not art history)
Here’s a random financial thought.
I’m part of that Amazon program where vendors place stuff into a system, and I can select stuff to get shipped to me at no cost. Then I review it, and keep the stuff.
Last summer into the fall, there was 10K items available. And almost daily I had access to high end/expensive items. Exercise bikes and rowing machines. $3000 robovacs. Upright vacs, hunting equipment. Every day, something new, often worth hundreds.
These days, there’s 4000 items in there. And I’m lucky if I see like one thing a week that’s worth ordering. So far this week i’ve picked up on like three things, stuff along the lines of a cutting board and a pair of mitts for my granddaughter. No $500 exercise bikes.
Seems like the vendors should be going crazy to get reviews for the christmas shopping season, but nope, nothing.
And this is vendors on amazon, not amazon, driving this. Seems like it’s a strong symptom of nervousness or something about the economy.
Guess they figured out that it wasn’t a good investment.
Yeah it’s probably all cloned goods manufactured in China. I assume America was their major target population which is not as profitable thanks to tariffs these days
i think i have found my number. the one where if i can get to it I can return to using excel on an amateur basis. (no, it is not imminent. I’m glad it isn’t infinite.)
some stress testing is needed. in excel of course.
I still need to find our number, I think we are getting pretty close to it and I haven’t done the work to figure out what our expenses are, and build out a buffer for new cars, home repair, etc. Or figure out what health insurance would cost for an ACA plan.
I say ‘pretty close,’ I think we need roughly another million, so it’s not something looming for 2026.
If you have a mix of Roth and Trad, you can engineer income to get pretty good subsidies.
Retirement might also be a good time to do Trad->Roth conversions, with whatever remaining buffer you have to do so without losing subsidies.
Yeah, I’ll have a pretty large chunk of brokerage that I can use to have a low income on paper.
I did this and talked about it at the AO. I was told by some there that I was cheating the system and that the right thing to do was to pay full premiums and leave the subsidies for others.
I took the subsidies.
They can complain while they work 
Yeah, I recall some of that discussion. I don’t know, I’ve been paying like $50k/year or more in FIT for a while now… I’ve been paying into the system a LOT for a long time, I won’t feel too bad about taking some money here.
Plus I’ve worked for 20 years on value-based healthcare, I’ve honestly been trying to make this whole system suck less. Whatever.
Your 401k distributions are still taxed into a general fund that then pays for the ACA.
If you’re legally eligible for the ACA but shouldn’t get to use it, why are you paying and why does it exist?
something, something, rich actuary, blah, blah, blah
IIRC, it was mostly the non-health actuaries who thought I was being a big ol’ meanie cheapskate taking advantage of the little guy. never mind I was leaving the workforce early and opening up a spot for someone else.
